Data leak: Zuckerberg’s apology fails to quiet Facebook storm
— 23rd March 2018
A
public apology by Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg failed yesterday to
quell outrage over the hijacking of personal data from millions of
people, as critics demanded the social media giant go much further to
protect privacy.
Speaking out for the first time about the
harvesting of Facebook user data by a British firm linked to United
States President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, Zuckerberg admitted to
betraying the trust of its two billion users, and promised to “step up.”
Vowing to stop data leaking to outside
developers, and to give users more control over their information,
Zuckerberg also said he was ready to testify before Congress, and was
not opposed to tougher regulation of internet titans.
But with pressure ratcheting up on the
33-year-old CEO over a scandal that has wiped around $60 billion (48
billion euros) off Facebook’s value, the initial response suggested his
promise of self-regulation had failed to convince.
“Frankly I don’t think those changes go
far enough,” Britain’s Culture and Digital Minister Matt Hancock told
the BBC. “It shouldn’t be for a company to decide what is the
appropriate balance between privacy and innovation and use of data,” he
said.
“The big tech companies need to abide by
the law and we are strengthening the law.” In Brussels, European leaders
were sending the same message as they prepared to push for tougher
safeguards on personal data online, while Israel became the latest
country to launch an investigation into Facebook.
The data scandal erupted at the weekend
when a whistleblower revealed that British consultant Cambridge
Analytica (CA) had created psychological profiles on 50 million Facebook
users via a personality prediction app, developed by a researcher named
Aleksandr Kogan. The app was downloaded by 270,000 people, but also
scooped up their friends’ data without consent as was possible under
Facebook’s rules at the time.
Facebook said it discovered last week that Cambridge Analytica may not have deleted the data as it certified although the British firm denies wrongdoing. “This was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with CNN, after ending his silence on the scandal in a blog post. “Our responsibility now is to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
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